Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

India Objects To Google Book Settlement

Posted by timothy on from the hey-fellas-let's-talk-this-over-some-more dept.

angry tapir writes "About 15 Indian authors and publishers, and two Indian organizations, have submitted their objections to Google's plan to scan and sell books online. Google's proposed settlement of a US lawsuit turns copyright law on its head, according to Siddharth Arya, legal counsel for the Indian Reprographic Rights Organisation, which licenses reproduction rights to books and other publications."

3 of 169 comments (clear)

  1. Communism! by schmidt349 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    God forbid Google should try to catalog, preserve, and make available out-of-print specialty books that are never going to get another run on the presses. I'm a specialist in a discipline (classical philology = ancient Greek/Roman literary studies) that depends heavily on this type of book, and I can't tell you the number of times I've discovered an old (like ca. 1960 or earlier) but important volume in a bibliography that my library doesn't have. I would kill to just be able to dial those books up on Google, but of course I can't because of bloodsuckers like these guys.

    Eventually rare but important books are just going to start disappearing, and by the time the problem gets big enough that the right people are aware of it we won't be able to do anything. Thanks a lot, publishers, for destroying untold amounts of information. I hope it was worth it.

    1. Re:Communism! by LordLucless · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your problem isn't with people like this guy. It's with politicians who have pushed copyright into the realms of insanity. If works expired in 14 years, they would probably survive to enter the public domain.

      --
      Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
  2. Re:the reason it's opt-out by sapphire+wyvern · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The real problem is that this is a huge change to how copyright law has previously worked, and it's being implemented by private enterprise and a trade association and their associated lawyers without any actual involvement of an elected legislature or executive.

    I'm all for the creation of a right to scan, archive, and make available orphaned works. I'm happy for Google to do the work and take whatever profit they can obtain from the market for orphaned works. (In fact, I think that if a copyright holder fails to make their copyrighted works available on Reasonable And Non Discriminatory terms, their copyright protection on those works should automatically cease. It should *never* be possible to use copyright to keep culture and knowledge away from public access). However, I think that right should be created by proper modification to copyright law, not by using class-action law to make an end run around the legislative system to create a monopoly on Google's behalf.